Issues concerning libraries and the law - with latitude to discuss any other interesting issues Note: Not legal advice - just a dangerous mix of thoughts and information. Brought to you by Mary Minow, J.D., A.M.L.S. [California, U.S.] and Peter Hirtle, M.A., M.L.S. Follow us on twitter @librarylaw

You can now get updates on the latest library filter lawsuit via RSS feed. Justia just added Bradburn et al v. North Central Regional Library District to its featured case list. Read the complaint (i.e. the library doesn't disable its filters upon request) and the answer (the library has always had a procedure in place for dealing with such inquiries), as well as the upcoming schedule (plaintiffs' experts filed by July 6; defendant's experts by August 3).

An interview with Stacy Stern, on new legal tracking services offered at Justia:

Minow: Hi Stacy! I see you have two new services of interest to librarians. Tell us about them, and how libraries can use them.

Stern: The first is the Justia Regulation Tracker. Librarians can help users find and track proposed rules, new rules, and notices from federal agencies, like the Copyright Office and the Federal Communications Commission. They can even track by keyword (like "library") so they don't get overwhelmed by too much information. By subscribing to daily updated RSS feeds, they need only set up their search once.

Minow: How much does it cost?

Stern: We make this information available free of charge. Our for-fee service is geared towards lawyers who wish to market their practices via the Web.

Minow: What's the second service?

Stern: We are making the federal civil district filings online available for free for the first time. Filings are categorized by state, federal district court and legal practice area, and include the presiding judge and cause of action information for each case. Visitors can subscribe for free to RSS feeds of new cases that meet specific criteria, or to RSS feeds for customized searches. For example, with an RSS feed, visitors can track new Federal Court patent cases, cases that are filed in a specific court or cases filed against a particular company.

Minow: Where do you get the documents?

Stern: From the courts directly. Right now we have all the federal civil District courts. We are also adding a featured case section on our news.justia.com sub-site (currently live, but underdevelopment) where we have all of the electronically filed documents for some selected cases. Right now we are featuring Faith Center Church Evangelist Ministries et al v. Glover et al (about whether a public library policy: "Library meeting rooms shall not be used for religious services" is constitutional), Author's Guild v. Google (about whether the Google Book Search Library Project violates copyright), Viacom v. YouTube & Google (about whether third parties -like libraries- can be liable for copyright infringement in user generated content), the Menu Foods pet food cases (extremely important for library cats) and a few others. We will be working with legal researchers to add more cases of note in the near future.

Minow: Any way to search the full text of court documents?

Stern: Not right now. The filing documents and attachments are usually page images. We are looking at OCRing them, and making keyword searching available in the future.

Minow: Tell us about your transition from FindLaw to Justia. Will Justia offer free legal information for library users?

Stern: I am very excited about our work at Justia. We are committed to making legal information and resources easy to find online. We've already started putting up free legal resources such as BlawgSearch.com and the US Supreme Court cases in addition to the docket and regulation projects. We are planning to add more and more free legal information in the future.

Maybe, at least according to a recent article in the Maine Antiques Digest. The article describes a claim of copyright infringement in descriptions of coins found in numismatic dealer catalogs. In some cases the descriptions appear to be primarily factual, which should prevent them from being copyrighted. In other cases, though, the description is more expressive, and may warrant copyright protection.

It will be an interesting case to follow. If it reaches a decision, it should provide some guidance on how creative we must be in our catalog records before we can justifiably assert a copyright interest in them.

Minow: Curtis, at the Oregon Library Association Legal Ease pre-conference, you mentioned that Oregon has a law that applies to unattended children left in a public libraries. Could you tell us more about it?

Kiefer: Six years ago when we were reviewing our code of conduct for the library, we were going through a period when many young children were being left at the library for extended periods (4-8 hours) or not being picked up at library closing time. As we often do, we look at what Oregon law has to say on a particular issue, write our policy and have it reviewed by our City Attorney. We found that the statute cited below could be applied to libraries.

Minow: Is there a specific age that the law applies to?

Kiefer: I am including the language in the Oregon Revised Statutes (2005) that addresses age.

163.545 Child neglect in the second degree.

(1) A person having custody or control of a child under 10 years of age commits the crime of child neglect in the second degree if, with criminal negligence, the person leaves the child unattended in or at any place for such period of time as may be likely to endanger the health or welfare of such child.

(2) Child neglect in the second degree is a Class A misdemeanor. [1971 c.743 §174; 1991 c.832 §2]

So far we have invoked this once when a father loudly announced to his young daughter that he was leaving because she wouldn't get off an educational software computer. He left, we called the home where the mother responded with, "Oh he does that," and then we called the police. Once the police became involved (I believe he received a citation) he threatened to sue the library. Once legal counsel was consulted he found that he didn't have a case. That was the last we heard of the incident.

Barbara Campbell, past President of the California Association of Library Trustees and Commissioners, passed away. She inspired the CALTAC board and members for as long as I can remember. She was also the library director at the Santa Clara County Library, where I worked some years after she'd retired. Her famous funding formula lived on: branch library budgets were based on an equitable mix of population, taxation and circulation. It continued to work well. She will be remembered.

Edward N. Albro writes about his experience setting up a google search history for himself. Surprise! He finds his old searches back to Dec. 2005, even though he didn't opt in until now.

WORSE yet, I notice in the google FAQ that you can get your (or presumably anyone's) search history via RSS feeds. You need the person's username and password, but who knows how strong those are.

On the one hand, google search history can be far more invasive into your mind than library records.

On the other hand, google users opt in, sort of. As I understand it, search histories are only available for people who already have some type of google account, like gmail... and who use the google toolbar. But do gmail users know that their histories are out there, available to anyone who knows their username/passwords? Sounds like you no longer need to get your hands on someone's actual computer to look at browser search histories. At least if you're a google account holder, and know about this, you can "pause," edit your search history, or opt out altogether.

Library users, however, don't have a choice but to leave a trail of library records of current items, holds and fines. These records are all potentially available via RSS with only a library card number and weak PIN number to protect them. Libraries need to offer strong PIN numbers to those users who care about their privacy.

I'm teaching an online course on libraries and digital copyright at San José State University School of Library and Information Science this fall. It will be available to library students at other schools through WISE.

Here's last year's syllabus. Feel free to make suggestions as I revise for the fall, especially if you're one of my former students.

From interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt in Wired 4-9-07. The banality of ...

Now, let's look at television. Every one of the next generation of cable set-top boxes is going to get upgraded to an IP-addressable set-top box. So all of a sudden, that set-top box is a computer that we can talk to. We can't tell whether it's the daughter or the son or the husband or the wife in a household. All we know is we're just talking to the television. But that's pretty targetable because family buying patterns are pretty predictable, and you can see what programs they're watching. And if you're watching a YouTube video, we know you're watching that video.